


Valron

by vinnie2757



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Pre-Relationship, almost flirting - Freeform, being adults they think rude thoughts, demi3 is a bitch of a spell, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23683807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: Whilst building the rocket, some monsters make themselves known. Cid handles it, in Cid's own little way.
Relationships: Cid Highwind/Shera
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Valron

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoy these two very much indeed, and I hope you do, too. Because it's all you're getting from me for the next six months.

Shera is inside the rocket, wedged in between panels as she feeds cables through to connect to the cockpit when she hears hollering from outside. Hollering isn’t uncommon, and for the longest minute or two, she ignores it, trying to not get the cables tangled, but there’s a kink lower down that’s catching on the panel and she can’t quite twist it. Wriggling her arm down the gap, she stretches her fingers to try and shove the cable out of the catch, and almost has it when she hears a screech.

More yelling, more screeching, and she smashes her funny bone on the end of a panel as she yanks her arm free, scraping up the inside on the edge of the metal. She rushes to the rocket’s entrance and crashes into the railing outside, searching the skies. She knows that screech, has heard it in the night before now, out on the plains, towards the mountains.

It shouldn’t be here. There’s no reason for it to have come so far away from the shadows of the mountains, and she can’t see it.

‘Eyes on it?’ she hollers, but the engineers down on the ground wave their arms, hollering at her to get back inside.

She knows she should, because she’s not trained to fight monsters like the boys are, is one of the weakest links here. She can bite and scratch if she has to, but against _monsters_ , it’s – it’s weak. Pointless. They’re twice as big as her and four times as strong, and she _should_ go inside.

Instead, she trips down the stairs, scrapes the back of her legs, and searches the skies. Still no sign of it, and she whirls, trying to place it. It’s still screeching, it can’t be far.

The Captain appears from nowhere, crashing into the ground not three feet from her, spear in hand. She has no idea _why_ he uses spears, because there’s guns aplenty around here, and he has three in the garage he built on the cabin.

‘Idiot,’ he snarls, straightening up and spinning the spear, holding it flush to his arm and she hates how she looks at the stretch of his forearm, the bunch of his sleeve around his bicep. ‘You’re going to get yourself fuckin’ killed, and then get me killed tryin’ to save your stupid fucking ass. Why can’t you ever do as you’re fuckin’ told?’

Because, Shera wants to say, she is a grown woman and does what she wants. Instead, she says, ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘Clearly,’ the Captain snorts, and rolls his eyes.

His free hand touches her arm, pulls her so that she’s more behind him than beside, and she turns so they’re back to back, eyes in the back of his head.

‘Why’s it so far down?’ she asks, ‘off the mountains, I mean.’

‘Fuck knows,’ the Captain replies, and she can feel the weight of him behind her, the subtle shifts as he readies to jump or dive or attack. ‘Food, maybe. Territory. Maybe it’s lost. I don’t really give a shit, to be honest. It shouldn’t be here, and I need to get rid of it ‘fore it hurts y – someone.’

Another screech, and then a howl.

‘Wolves!’ Shera exclaims, and grabs the Captain’s arm. Three of them, which is easy enough to deal with, she thinks, all told.

‘Where the fuck have the others gone?’ the Captain asks, but obligingly reorders himself so that he can cover her. ‘Get out of their reach, wherever it is. Just stay out of sight.’

She hesitates, but he’s planting his feet, and if she doesn’t want to get caught on the end of the spear, she needs to move. So she jumps over a wire, and starts running, which just attracts the wolves attention, and she knows she’s not faster than a _wolf_ , she’s barely faster than Ana’s dog. But she runs for it anyway, towards the scaffolding, and she’s about ten feet from it when she hears a snap, which makes her startle, trip, and skid a few feet across the dirt. She scrambles, but the wolf is springing, and she curls into a ball at the same time the spear goes straight through its face. It makes a tiny, cut-off noise, and hits the earth with a wet, limp thump, and she swallows, stares at it.

A hand grabs the back of her shirt, hauls her up, and then the Captain’s shoving at her, stamping on the wolf’s neck to yank the spear free.

‘Move, for fuck sake!’

She scrambles up the scaffolding, taking the frame instead of the ladder, and she swings herself onto the platform as the Captain boots one of the wolves away to spear the other.

He’s not _clean_ with his fighting, she’ll give him that, he’s messy and unrefined and clearly grew up brawling. He’s got good aim, though, she understands this, has the half-smashed wolf skull to prove it. And she’ll admit, under the pounding of her heart, that it’s kind of – hot – in a way. Attractive. He’s all muscle and she knows he’s strong, but she’s never seen it really used before, not in any meaningful way. Opening jars and doing pull-ups on the scaffolding for something to do isn’t really meaningful, but she’d always enjoyed watching it.

‘Where did you learn all that?’ she calls down to him, and he calls back for her to fuck off.

‘Stop talking!’ he hollers, ‘fuck sake, where’s that Valron?’

The Valron is not far away, and is quick to make its presence known with a swift dive out of fucking _nowhere_ , knocking the Captain off his feet and several metres away. Shera screams, about to jump down to rush to him, but the Captain’s groaning and rolling to his feet, clutching at his ribs.

‘Motherfucker!’ he shouts, because that’s just the way he is.

On his knees, heaving for breath and looking about ready to throw up, Shera watches the Valron circle, land.

‘Captain!’ she yells, and with a nod to himself, the Captain’s pushing himself upright, one, two, three, up we get.

He staggers to his spear, and snatches it up, whirls to face the Valron. He’s heard stories of these fuckers, the things that they can do, using magic without the need for materia, and he knows, in his bones, that he should strap a couple to his spear, but he just can’t bring himself to. Magic is something – he’s heard _stories_ of the bad things that materia can do to you, if you don’t use it properly, and it’s not – it’s not something he wants to be involved with really, if he can help it. Best stick with what he knows; cold, hard steel and a brain in his head.

He’s sure, as he rolls out of the way of a kick from ten feet in the air, that he’s got a few broken ribs. The fucker hit him hard, and fast, and it’s all kind of sore in his chest, but whatever, he can deal with it. The most important thing, he thinks, is not getting an open wound. These fucking things carry infections like they’re spare change, and he doesn’t need it, does _not_ need the stress of an infection on top of everything.

He takes a swipe, and it makes a really good cut down the monster’s side, but doesn’t give him much of an edge, because the monster slashes back and nearly has his arm off. Cid leaps back, looks at the gashes in his arm, and shakes them off. Shera is hanging off the scaffolding, watching him, and he doesn’t _care_ about an audience, but the Valron will see her eventually, and she can’t do anything. It would kill her, and then he’d have to deal with the aftermath of that, and he’s heard about her parents, about the grief they’d endured. He doesn’t want to have to fly out there and tell them that sorry, sir, ma’am, I got your daughter killed because I couldn’t kill a fucking _Valron_.

So he takes a second to adjust himself, shaking out his arm, going numb with the cuts, and stretches out his ribs, and then he plants his feet. One good hit should do enough, he thinks, if he can land it square, just kill it outright. He’s done worse on more, and if he can get the speed, he should be able to get the jump right.

What he doesn’t expect is to make the jump at the same time as the bastard casts what he later learns is Demi3, and _fuck him_ if it doesn’t nearly kill him. It feels like a fucking black hole in the middle of his chest, and he chokes on his breath, the weight of the attack hitting him square in his gut, and he almost misses his landing, because his vision’s black at the edges and his ears are ringing and every fucking muscle hurts. He’s never been so aware of pain at the same time as being so aware of how numb he is, and he sticks the landing, gets the Valron right in the neck, and they both crash to the floor. The Valron gurgles, fucking _dies_ , and Cid just lies there.

‘Captain?’ Shera calls, but he can barely hear it over the pounding of blood in his ears.

He coughs once, twice, manages to roll to the side and on the third cough, he throws up, bile and tea and blood, and Shera is shouting to him.

(He learns, later, that he couldn’t have been killed by the attack, that it is meant to cripple, not kill, but fucking hell, it feels close to it.)

Everything is dark for a second, blurry and underwater, and then there are hands on his face, his neck, shoulders, and everything hurts. It hurts and he doesn’t want to hurt like this, thanks, take it away.

Shera’s face swims in and out of the darkness for a second, her glasses gone, her hair a mess, and her eyes, so bright, so worried.

‘Captain,’ she starts, and he chokes.

‘S’alright,’ he says, ‘be up in a minute.’

‘Oh, _Planet_ ,’ she breathes, and his ear feels warm, soft, the smell of soap and laundry detergent.

She’s got his head in her lap, and she’s rifling through his trouser pockets, the bitch. She finds what she’s after, and he hears her talk, the desperate cadence of her words. She’s got his radio, is calling in for support.

‘You’ll be alright,’ she assures him, ‘you’re going to fine. Just need to get you cleaned up and get a potion down your neck.’

He snorts, and it sounds wet. He spits some blood out, then smears it across her leg when he realises he’s spat it onto her.

‘Oh,’ he says, and the darkness swells around him.

They’re a sight when John and Livas get to them. Covered in blood, the Captain blue and grey and black and purple, and Shera white in the cheeks, wild in the eyes, his head in her lap, her hand down his shirt to measure his heart, because the pulse in his neck just wasn’t good enough apparently. (Truth be told, the pulse in his neck doesn’t even occur to her. She thinks of his heart before his pulse, and goes for that.)

‘A Valron,’ she chokes out when they skid to a stop next to them. ‘I can’t lift him by myself. I think he’s got broken ribs. It used a spell.’

Livas hisses. ‘Demi,’ he says, ‘three, if the Captain is _very_ unlucky. They’re fuckers for it.’

Shera wipes her face, smears blood across it.

‘Demi’s not – it’s not fatal,’ she says, ‘he’ll be alright.’

‘He’ll be fine, so long as we get him inside and get him patched up.’

‘I told him that. I’m worried about his arm, it’s going a funny colour.’

‘Dirty claws,’ John assures her, ‘we’ll clean it out. ShinRa teach you basic first aid?’

He nods at her wonky tourniquet, made out of her socks, tied together and tied tight about his arm.

‘It was all I had,’ she says with a shrug, ‘there wasn’t anything else long enough.’

John rest a hand on her head for a moment. ‘You’re alright, I’m not saying you’re wrong. Come on, up you get, we’ll get him upright.’

Upright is not happening, and they end up carrying him. With the broken ribs, it’s hard, but John manages to get him over his shoulders, gets thrown up on for his efforts, and Livas rests a hand on Shera’s back, gets her moving.

Reine is ready at the Captain’s house with ice and blankets and both the ingestible and cutaneous potions, though her hands are on her hips and she’s shaking her head.

‘The state of you two,’ she snorts, and gestures. ‘The bedroom will do.’

It’s a small space, with the bed against the wall and she has to shove all his clothes back into the drawers to shut the dresser so they can have room to put him down. He looks pallid, covered in blood and bile and dirt, and Reine laments the brand new t-shirt they’re going to have to cut away to get at his injuries.

‘Shera,’ she says, kindly, because Shera is hovering, and it’s really not helpful. ‘If you go and shower and change, we’ll be done by the time you’re back.’

‘No,’ the Captain moans, and his hand jumps, whip-fast, to grab onto John’s shirt. ‘No, she stays.’

His eyes are barely open, dark with bruises and hazy, but they’re fixed on her.

‘Okay,’ Shera nods, ‘okay.’

Reine raises her eyebrows, but tells her to go wash her hands – properly, mind – and come back. When Shera’s done so, they’ve got the Captain’s shirt off all the way, and Reine’s cleaned the worst of the dirt off his face.

‘You know to clean a wound?’ she asks, and Shera nods.

‘Basic First Aid,’ she says, ‘but nothing fancy. I don’t know how to use Cure materia or anything.’

‘Well, lucky you, we can’t because we don’t have one.’

An oversight, she thinks later, and purchases one at the first available opportunity.

Instead, they have soap and water, and cutaneous potions, and it’s the best they’ve got so they do their best with it. John leaves them to it, talks about getting rid of the monsters before the corpses attract more, and Reine goes to get more potions and some tea on the go.

‘You look like you need one,’ she says, and Shera breathes deep.

The Captain’s arm is a mangled, ugly mess, but she perches on the edge of the bed, and elevates it, keeps the tourniquet pulled tight. Gently, she starts cleaning the skin, working in closer to the ugly, _ugly_ gashes, and uses tweezers to pick out any bits of grit she finds.

‘Captain?’ she asks, just to see if he’s still with her.

‘Fuckin’,’ he replies, but doesn’t give her a noun to go with it.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and hushes him when he hisses at the first touch of the cloth on the cut.

‘Doin’ my job,’ he grits out, and his eyes are so blue. ‘If you had – fuck me – if you had stayed in the rocket. Wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, and he grunts, grabs the back of her shorts and tugs, which she supposes is his way of saying that it’s alright.

Once she’s got it cleaned, she dabs the potion into the edges of the wound, wraps it in a bandage. If she had the know-how, and the kit, she’d have put a few stitches in there, but potions work their way across open wounds, knit it all back together like glue.

‘You think,’ she starts, and then pauses.

‘No,’ he replies, ‘obviously not.’

His arm is in her lap now, her fingers brushing against the edge of the bandages.

‘You’ll be alright,’ she says, ‘Livas thinks it was Demi.’

‘Feels like it,’ he replies, and his free hand comes up, brushes her cheek. ‘My blood?’

She nods. ‘You were coughing a lot. Do you feel up to drinking?’

‘Potion?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Eat a dick.’

If they were other people, she’d make some kind of joke about how it’s a deal, how if she did suck him off, he’d owe her. But they are not those people, and she doesn’t make that joke. Instead, she sighs, and touches the flourishing bruises on his ribs. He hisses, winces, and she rests her hand on unblemished skin, somewhere between his ribs and his belt.

‘It’s my fault,’ she says, and he shrugs with his eyebrows.

‘Usually,’ he agrees, ‘should have been paying attention. Should have – shouldn’t have gotten hit like that.’

‘But you did,’ she sighs, and plucks at a loose thread around a belt loop. ‘And I owe you for that.’

‘You owe me for a lot,’ he replies, and his eyes close, taking a deep, rattling breath. ‘S’pose I’d better drink the fucking goop, ‘fore I end up here for three weeks.’

‘You need to rest anyway,’ she says, ‘it takes some time before you can get all your strength back, even with potions. The rest of the afternoon, at least.’

‘Fuck off,’ he snorts, but he looks tired, sounds it.

‘You can have tea, afterwards?’

She says it the way she imagines she might offer sex, and flushes deep in her neck. He obviously hears it the same way, because he goes pink, but he thankfully, _blessedly_ , doesn’t insult her.

‘Well,’ she says, and is loath to get up, but up she gets. ‘I’ll get the – I’ll be right back.’

He has to sleep elevated, to let his ribs heal properly, and she offers to stay. The house needs a clean, anyway, and what better time to do it than when the Captain can’t shout at her about the mess she makes while doing it?

Reine gets one of the boys to run dinner over to them, and Shera sits with the Captain, quietly by his side, not judging the shakiness of his hands, because the shock takes a bit to work through his system, but he downs his grub, and tells her he’d like to sleep.

‘I’ll be right outside,’ she says, had already pulled some blueprints out of the workshop to start looking at while he rests. ‘If you need me, just call.’

‘Whatever.’

In the morning, he gets up to find her asleep at the table, glasses askew and cheek on a folded arm, the other clutching at a pen still. She’s been sketching up plans for new oxygen tanks, even though they haven’t really tested the first run of them yet. It’ll be the twenty-fifth model, and he stands there, watches her. He feels awful still, stiff and sore and cracking at the edges, but he enjoys the sight. She’s beautiful, he thinks, in a way he had never really considered anyone beautiful. She’s plain, and average, but there’s a spark in her eyes that he can’t look away from, a curve of her lips that he would kiss until he died, if she let him. And like this, with her mouth blessedly shut and not spouting nonsense, he – he – this is probably what love is, he thinks. This is what his mother warned him about, when she told him to look out for girls that he wasn’t immediately taken by. They’re the ones that catch you off-guard, the ones that creep up and knock your feet out, the way his father had taken her by surprise.

He leans on the doorway, watches her breathe, the soft deepness of her shoulder rising, in and out, the flutter of a strand of hair as her breath blows on it. She’s filthy still, t-shirt stained with dirt and blood, and she’s obviously washed what she can, her face and arms and legs, but her clothes are stained, her hair matted. He commits the image to memory, presses a hand against his ribs; if anyone asks, its his ribs, not his heart.

‘Shera,’ he says, too loud for the silence of the room, and she bolts upright, panicked.

‘Huh – what – I was – Captain! Oh, you’re awake! Are you feeling better now you’ve rested?’

‘I’m on my feet,’ he says, and crosses the room to sit, gingerly in the opposite chair. ‘You’ve drooled on the blueprints.’

She looks down to the smudge of ink, and flushes crimson. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll get it dried and copy it out, I was – I must have fallen asleep.’

‘Obviously. S’pose we’ve missed breakfast.’

Hint, hint.

She checks her watch, and nods. ‘It’s okay, I’ll get some – I’ll go back and change and get some eggs and bacon, maybe some of that thick bread?’

He nods. ‘Sounds good. Take a shower, here – I’ll make tea here, if you wanted to go shower,’ he corrects himself, and tries not think about her naked.

She could have showered here, but then she’d have had to put one of his t-shirts on, and he tries _very_ hard not to think about her in his clothes. She’s worn his jacket, a couple of times, when the summer showers have caught her off-guard, and that had been enough for him to say enough was enough.

Her ears are pink, her eyes bright.

‘Yes, Captain,’ she says, and he shuffles to the bathroom while she does as bid.

The kettle’s warm when she gets back, ready to whistle, and he doesn’t look guilty at all, in fresh trousers and no shirt, because stretching to get his boxers on, and he wasn’t in the mood for a shirt anyway.

‘The bruises are healing up nicely,’ she says, gesturing at his ribs.

Her hair is clean now, freshly-washed and with the fluff of having been just-dried, pulled back and off her neck, her t-shirt too big and her shorts too short. There’s still a smear of blood on her glasses, and there’s a nasty bruise on her elbow, a scrape down her arm he hadn’t noticed. When she stands at the stove to do the tea and food, he notices scrapes down the back of her legs, flecks of skin mottled with the tell-tale redness of nearly skinning yourself.

‘What did you do?’ he asks, and she rubs her elbow.

‘I’m clumsy,’ she shrugs. ‘You know me. Anything I can catch myself on.’

‘You fell down the stairs, didn’t you?’

She laughs, and yeah, okay. Yeah, he’s in love with that laugh. He can admit it.

‘You got me. It’s nothing, not compared to you. Are you okay to be up and about?’

He snorts. ‘I’m fine,’ he promises. ‘Might need some help up there today, but I’ll be alright.’

She stiffens, and is about to tell him off, but then she backs down. He wishes, deep down, that she wouldn’t chicken out of it, her backbone is ridiculously attractive, and sometimes he tries to wind her up, just to see if she’ll tell him to fuck off. The moment she says fuck, he thinks, is the moment he just proposes. But it’s been a while, and she’s not said it yet.

Instead of telling him to fuck off, she says, ‘if you’re sure, Captain.’

‘Am I ever not?’

She hums, and finishes up breakfast. Once they’ve eaten, and she’s cleared up, despite him telling her to leave it for him to do later, he struggles into a t-shirt and bites his cheeks before asking for help with his boots.

‘You know,’ she says, kneeling at his feet, and he shouldn’t like the view so much, ‘if you can’t lace your boots, you probably shouldn’t be working.’

He shrugs, and then rubs his ribs.

‘Is what it is,’ he tells her, ‘come on, four-eyes, we don’t have all day.’

And just to prove to him that she is the woman he wants for the rest of his life, she slows down and meets his gaze completely level. He smiles, and then she blushes, ducks her head, and finishes up. She pats his foot to assure him that she’s done, and he thanks her, leads her up to the rocket.


End file.
